Fountain on Green to flow freely again

For the first time in decades, passersby strolling through the New Haven Green next spring will once again be able to quench their thirst at an iconic fountain.

The 1907 Bennett Memorial Fountain — located on the corner of the Green closest to Church and Chapel Streets — has recently been repaired and stabilized in a $30,000 project, the New Haven Independent reported Monday.

Designed by Yale art professor John Ferguson Weir, the fountain was modeled off the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates of Athens and was the first structure other than a church built on the Green. Other Greek-influenced buildings — such as the New Haven Free Public Library — were constructed shortly after.

“What I love about this fountain besides its Palladian shape is that it also provided for our four-footed friends—a trough for horses and a low basin for dogs,” Anne Calabresi, a proprietor of the Green, wrote in an email to the Independent. “Now that’s real community spirit not to say a high level of human spirit!”